Silent installation with setups build with InstallShield 2016 SP2 Standalone Build (SAB) version

[MJ_Zeiss]

Hello,

to test setups we are using silent installation from command line (e.g. setup.exe /s /v"/qn ..."). Since we switched to installing setups build with InstallShield 2016 SP2 Standalone Build (SAB) version, we can see that the help windows of msiexec.exe opens when these setups are started. This did not happen without SP2 version.

Is there anyone who had the same problem?

[shunt]

The windows installer help window normally appears if the syntax of the command line is incorrect - not if the installer fails.

Is the command line that you pass to the IS2016 SP2 installer completely identical to the IS2016 installer?

Can you provide the full command line?

[MJ_Zeiss]

We only updated InstallShield 2016 version with SP2. Nothing else was changed!

We start the silent installation of setups for several products from PowerShell script:

$pathToSetup = 'setup.exe'
$productName = 'MyProduct'
$timeoutInMs = 900000
$installPathParam = '/v"/qn INSTALLDIR=\"C:\Program Files\MyCompany\REPLACE\"' -replace "REPLACE",$productName

            Write-Host  $pathToSetup -ArgumentList '/s', $installPathParam  -passthru
            $proc = Start-Process $pathToSetup -ArgumentList '/s', $installPathParam  -passthru
            if (!$proc.WaitForExit($timeoutInMs))
            {  
                Write-Host "Killing the process because of timeout!"
                $proc.Kill()
            }

So here is how the result command line should look like:

setup.exe /s /v"/qn INSTALLDIR=\"C:\Program Files\MyCompany\MyProduct 2.0\""

[shunt]

Looks like there's an additional backslash here "INSTALLDIR=\" which would be causing this - 

Try this instead:

setup.exe /s /v"/qn INSTALLDIR="C:\Program Files\MyCompany\MyProduct 2.0\""

[MJ_Zeiss]

The additional backslash INSTALLDIR=\" is needed as escape sequence, because of having a string property with whitespaces inside of the first double quotes beginning from /v" (see https://community.flexera.com/t5/InstallShield-Forum/Space-characters-in-Setup-exe-command-line/td-p/131031). But in the PowerShell script at the end there is a second double quotes \"" missing! Thanks for your hint solving the problem.

However this does not explain why the script was working with setups build without SP2?